The Chinese government raised the protection level of Chinese pangolins(穿山甲) to the top level on World Environment Day -- June 5th. Pangolins used to be at the second level under national protection. This act makes people pay more attention to ecological civilization(生态文明). It also shows our great determination to fight against the illegal hunting(非法捕猎) and the trading of wild animals and other things made from them.
According to a national wildlife study in the 1990s, there were about 60,000 Chinese pangolins in 11 provinces, including Yunnan, Hunan, Guangdong, Sichuan and Zhejiang. Until now, pangolins have become fewer and fewer because of the living places that are being destroyed, crazy hunting and smuggling. In 2017, Chinese pangolins were placed on the Red List of Threatened Species after a team of experts believed their number had dropped by 90 percent in the past years.
"The value of pangolins to the ecosystem is much more than the value of their meat or scales(鳞).There is a long way to go in protecting them, but we can start by saying no to things made from them," said Zhou Fei, chief program officer of the World Wildlife Fund of China.
What's more, the pangolin has a very strong response(反应) to stress, which means that it easily becomes nervous when it is caught.
Pangolin scales have been taken away from the Chinese Pharmacopeia(药典). It means the scales will no longer be used as a kind of medicine.
